Road bill gridlock worries states

The doomsday clock is ticking down on a Sunday expiration of surface transportation programs, and there’s nowhere those bells are tolling as loudly as back home in lawmakers’ districts.

State transportation departments are already preparing for the worst: North Carolina has tallied up about $1.2 billion worth of infrastructure projects at stake, West Virginia is preparing to idle projects and nationally many paychecks and jobs are on the line.

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If Congress can’t come together on an extension by April 1, the federal government’s ability to collect and spend most of the federal gasoline tax money that fuels the nation’s transportation system will come to a screeching halt.

The Highway Trust Fund — the place where federal gas taxes are deposited — will start incurring losses to the tune of $110 million each day the law is lapsed. That means states won’t be reimbursed for projects already under way, putting them in the uncomfortable position of trying to decide how long they can float the money before they have to shutter projects midstream. The uncertainty created will also mean states just won’t start new projects already planned.

Mark Foster, the chief financial officer of North Carolina’s Transportation Department, said his agency has already prepared a list of projects that may have to be delayed if uncertainty over federal funding continues. That figure amounts to about 41,000 jobs on the line and includes a hefty inventory of bridge repair and replacements, which are among the most desperately needed infrastructure repairs nationwide.

“Very quickly … [a shutdown] could bring the entire industry to a halt, and it would be very difficult to resurrect it quickly. What we’ve found is when you slow it down, it takes twice as long to crank it back up,” Foster said.

Each state will be faced with similar decisions, but the problem is particularly acute for northern climates where construction seasons are short, said John Horsley, executive director of the Association of American State and Highway Transportation Officials.

“From about the frost line up north, they plan for April to October. So now is the time when they’ve got to plan for the year,” Horsley said. “So if it’s up in the air, they’ll do a lot less.”

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said she’s been in touch with a number of states and used their feedback to continue her crusade for the House to simply clear the Senate’s two-year surface transportation bill.

“In West Virginia, they gave us a very interesting scenario that they may have to shut projects down and delay payments to contractors because they have a strained cash flow,” Boxer said at a Wednesday news conference that featured both a countdown clock to program expiration and a map of the job losses by state.

Some have suggested that consumers might end up getting a break at the pump, because the feds won’t be able to collect most of the 18.4 cents currently levied on a gallon of gas. But Horsley threw cold water on that notion, saying the expectation is that gasoline stations will just pocket the difference — exactly what airlines did when congressional inaction forced a two-week partial FAA shutdown that left the government unable to collect excise taxes on the price of an airline ticket.